


Five Years

by PresidentOfGotham



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Gen, Tarsus IV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 03:10:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15133796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PresidentOfGotham/pseuds/PresidentOfGotham
Summary: Five years in the life of Jim Kirk, and how they changed him.





	Five Years

Jim is ten. 

Jim is ten, and the crisis is starting. The crops are dying. His aunt and uncle assure him that everything will be alright. "Governor Kodos will take care of us," they say. But Jim hears their whispers at night. They're worried. He pictures the farmhouse in Riverside, and thinks that were it not for Frank tarnishing the memory, he might almost miss it.

He had refused to call it his home for so long, although it was the only one he'd ever known. When Jim left Riverside, he thought that he knew what he was getting into. Now, he knows that everything is out of his control. Jim is ten, and for the first time since he arrived at the colony on Tarsus IV, he feels uncertain. 

Jim is eleven. 

Jim is eleven, and as Governor Kodos's voice rings out above the crowd of 4,000 people gathered in the square, telling them that they are not worth enough to live, Jim feels as though he is going into shock. He can't see his aunt and uncle through the people pressed against him, and part of him knows that he will never see them again. He flashes back to the moments that they had told him "Governor Kodos will take care of us," with a confidence that only those who have absolute trust can convey.  _It was only a few weeks ago,_ Jim thinks numbly.

Somewhere to his left, the guards begin to fire into the crowd. The sound of screams will never leave him. He runs in the opposite direction, and grabs the too-skinny arms of two small children. Somehow (Jim will never remember how) the three of them make it to the edge of the crowd and slip out of the square without drawing the attention of the guards. Jim leads the children, a boy and a girl, to the wilderness surrounding their former home. Jim is eleven, and he has just witnessed a massacre. 

Jim is twelve. 

Jim is twelve, and he has been living in a cave with nine other children for nearly a year. They have managed to survive for this long by scavenging in the wilderness around them, raiding the homes of those who were killed, and in their truly desperate times, stealing from Kodos's personal stores. On those occasions, Jim and two of the older kids, Tom and Sandra, arm themselves with knives, sharpened sticks, and the single phaser that they've managed to collect.

The theft goes unnoticed for a while, long enough that Jim starts to gain confidence. But the sixth time that they raid the stores, Jim realizes that they have been followed. As Tom and Sandra load their backpacks with ration bars, Jim hears a crash behind him. He turns, and is horrified to see eight year old Cindy, her eyes wide with terror. Behind her, a guard rounds the corner, aiming his phaser at her. Before Jim can scream a warning, it's too late. Cindy is already dead.

The guard turns his phaser on Jim. Jim reaches for the phaser that's hidden in the bottom of his pack. He closes his eyes and shoots. The guard falls to the ground. Jim's ears start to ring. He can't remember how he, Tom, and Sandra make it back to the cave. He feels numb again. Jim is twelve, and he has just killed someone for the first time.

Jim is thirteen. 

Jim is thirteen, and he knows that Starfleet isn't coming for them. It's been too long. They've been abandoned. He and the nine- _no, eight_ (Jim struggles not to picture Cindy's face) other kids will die on Tarsus, hunted like dogs by Kodos and his men. They were slated to die, and yet they had survived for so long. The kids look up to him. They  _believe_ in him. But the truth is, Jim's not sure how much longer they can go on.

After Cindy was killed and their theft was discovered, they hadn't had much luck in way of finding food. The houses had long since been emptied of any supplies. True to his word, Kodos did value and protect the lives of the remaining members of the colony. Jim and the kids had no choice but to live off the land. It wasn't easy. More than once, Jim gave himself food poisoning testing berries and other foods to see if they were safe for the kids to eat.

But as the months pass, Jim doesn't have the strength to leave the cave. He and the kids slowly become too weak and sick to move. He knows that they will die here. Deep down, he's known since the beginning. He'd allowed himself to feel hope _(hope had gotten Cindy killed)_ and he feels the crushing defeat of having failed them more sharply than ever before. Jim breathes deeply. He thinks about the house in Riverside. He'll never lay eyes on it again. As his vision starts to go black, he thinks he hears engines in the distance. Jim is thirteen, and he and his kids have finally, _finally_ been rescued. 

Jim is fourteen. 

Jim is fourteen and nothing is the same after he is rescued from Tarsus. He's been separated from his kids. He doesn't know when he started thinking of them as _his_ , but it makes the separation hurt all the more. Since Kodos hasn't been located by Starfleet, the survivors were all given name changes. He doesn't know what happened to most of them, and has no way to track them down now.

Some had families to collect them. Jim has a mother and a brother (apparently Frank left his mother while Jim was off living in a cave) but no one came for him. No one has heard from his mother or Sam, not even once. So, Jim becomes a ward of the state of Iowa. He's bitter, and he's angry. After all he's been through, how can they expect him to return to a normal life, surrounded by normal kids? Jim's not like them anymore. He couldn't afford to be, and now he never can be.

For the first time in a long time, Jim is out of his element. He is somewhat shocked to discover that his "element" has essentially become "being in life-threatening danger." He doesn't know how to handle himself in a normal situation where he's not fighting for his life. Jim is fourteen, and he feels lost and alone. 


End file.
